Documentary

MUSIC VIDEO DVD/CD REVIEW [He-Said, She-Said] [Early] . Absolute Garbage

The DVD (SHE SAID)
Oh, you know those little mistakes in life you regret? I regret agreeing to do this review. First off, I remember thinking “damn, they ripped off Curve” when Garbage first hit the scene, then I remember being puzzled when my otherwise gentleman-y and sickly sweet friend said “Shirley Manson is fucking hot” or at least something lewd about her lips. I thought she was always a little Kate Moss mixed with Oprah Winfrey in the face, but okay, I get that her sultry voice and bra-less up-skirt writhing is irresistible to some… and oh yes, those plump red, red lips. So when she’s narcissistically licking a mirror in my personal fave Push It or being a luscious wind-induced Medusa in the awesomely blurry Milk or creating a hari krishna out of some street gigolo in the monochromatic Queer, she exudes lust. This is thankful since the three blokes in the band aren’t much to look at, probably because they are different types of rock gods: previous successful music producers including drummer Bruce Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins).

The Absolute Garbage videos are your typical nineties fare: a buffet of flash cuts, shallow depth of field, quick focus to out of focus switches, high contrast and filter-ific blasts, “bullet-time” swirls (made popular later in The Matrix). A particular stand-out is the deliciously awkward creepy vision of director Andrea Giacobbe’s Push It, which harkens Dom & Nic (Smashing Pumpkin’s Ava Adore) and Tarsem Singh (REM’s Losing My Religion and The Cell) with a lightbulb headed man exorcised by albino Damiens, and models in unsmiling broken-back poses and martian couture. Special is a mini-filmic depiction of a futuristic kingdom battle in souped-up bi-planes. When I Grow Up and Shut Your Mouth are those “look at me, I’m at a live concert” videos that bore me to tears. Manson does her best Gwen Stefani impersonation in the former though, in a rare moment wearing pants. The World is not Enough has the amazing slickness and computer graphics of a ILM production in a tidy 4-minute feature. Butch Vig had said that the video shoot for World was “much more of a pain in the ass than recording the song. It was like making a mini Bond film.” Ironically, the only video without her signature vermillion pout is in Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go) which involved more fun with greenscreen to make band members invisible, with a comical kicker at the video’s close. That was around the time when Manson attempted a platinum Pink/Annie Lennox shorn dyke ‘do in the early start of the millennium. Quickly returning to dark burgundy, she looks amazing in Sophie Muller’s Bleed Like Me (2005) despite the Batman and Robin mask and the robotic nazi nurse mannerisms.

The documentary with questionable audio quality included on Absolute Garbage is a little over an hour long, but to non-fans it might feel much longer. While doing a wonderful job of creating a chronicle of the start, heyday, end and resurrection of Garbage, it is a bit choppy and amateurish. At the end, you’ll learn that Shirley Manson is a sushi and Timothy Duncan addict, Bruce Vig contracted Hepatitis A, the band members became hard and fast friends one night when Shirley accidentally(?) dumped fellow musician Vic Chestnutt out of his wheelchair. Brief appearances by the Foo Fighters and Jack White in a Scot-to-Scot moment. Overall, Absolute Garbage is a compendium of nineties trashy chic and cinematographic experiments. The cryptically playful and heavily edited music videos of the nineties helped to add metaphor to the most simplistic of lyrics, imparting an edge to the otherwise tired and sussed out.

The CD (HE SAID)
Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson may not much to look at, but the way she flashes her panties, gropes her own breasts, and sticks her fist in her own mouth, it’s easy to tell she’s a philospher/scholar with no equal. This really must be the band’s main draw these days, because frankly, their songs since beautifulGarbage kinda stink. Don’t get me wrong, I was a Garbage fan in the nineties, but I shook my fixation following a long flirtation with Garbage version 2.0. Now, with Absolute Garbage, a collection of Garbage’s “greatest hits,” I have a chance to go back and remember my days of teen angst, questionable taste, and all around dorkiness.

Absolute Garbage features 17 tracks from Garbage’s three CD’s, as well as one new song and some formerly unreleased tracks. In discussing these I’ll go for an ultra-quick good, bad, ugly rundown.

The good? #1 Crush. Finally you don’t need the Romeo and Juliet Soundtrack in your collection. In fact, most of the songs from Garbage 2.0 are pretty okay. When I Grow Up, Push It, Special, and I Think I’m Paranoid, while strangely sounding like bits and pieces of the same epic song, manage to hold up better than those from the first Garbage cd.

The Bad? The World is Not Enough. One of the absolute worst Bond songs, second only to Sheryl Crow’s Tomorrow Never Dies. Shut Your Mouth. What the hell was this? Was this even really a hit? I think it played MTV once before disappearing from their lineup forever. Why Do You Love Me? and Tell Me Where It Hurts. Both songs start out well, but immediately fall apart, with an awkward chorus and high-school English caliber lyrics.

The Ugly? It’s All Over But the Crying. It sounds like it belongs in some Starbucks frequented by heartbroken yuppie assholes, crying over their fact their beige beamer doesn’t have warmed, vibrating seats…or whatever they get upset about. Add to this pretty much all the old old Garbage songs. These haven’t aged well at all. Stupid Girl, Vow, Queer, Milk…terrible. Although I dug them before, I can’t listen to them any longer. I might make an allowance for I’m Only Happy When It Rains, but that’s up for debate.

If you indeed are a passive Garbage fan, Absolute Garbage is a bit of a wise buy, as it eliminates a number of CDs from your collection. Still, most of the quality tracks come from Garbage 2.0, which could be obtained quite cheap from a used record store.  Purchase at your own discretion.
Absolute Garbage gets dumped in the stores on July 24th.

About the Authors

Chris Nelson and Kris Kobayashi-Nelson are the proud co-founders of dreamlogic.net. The adventurous soulmates occasionally take a break from ghost hunting, spelunking, programming, to view some killer flicks.